I had another Weekend Wisdom planned for today, but Meijer majorly blew it out of the water, clearly because they weren’t happy to be left out of yesterday’s Grocery Store Manufactured Spend Deals post, or something. So we’ll save the Weekend Wisdom for another weekend. In the mean time, this deal is crazy:
This includes BestBuy gift cards, which are currently selling at 96-96.5%. That means you can manufacture spend at 6% profit, plus grocery store rewards and credit card rewards. There are other options at slightly lower profit too. This is bananas, and if you’re near a Meijer you should hop on it. I’m unfortunately not near one myself, but I am almost ready to book a cheap round trip to Meijer country for a weekend getaway.
The only rental cars currently available in Meijer land, cause #carpocalypse
1.Check here for Chase spending bonuses between May 15 and August 15 on co-branded credit cards, like Hyatt, United, IHG, AARP, or Marriott if you’re a masochist. My Hyatt card offer was for 8x on Hyatt Properties and 5x for spend on travel or at gas stations, up to $1,500 per month. My United card got nicely worded “go eat dirt” letter.
2.Simon has 50% off of Visa Gift Card purchase fees using promo code FS50MAY between now and Friday. Just don’t use an American Express card when buying because you won’t earn points or rewards. Personally I’m still (im)patiently waiting for a new promo code at VanillaGift.com.
3. You can kill two birds with one stone with your Saks American Express Platinum credit; check out with PayPal after shopping through Rakuten and you’ll get 15x, your $30 Personal Platinum monthly PayPal credit, and you’ll still be reimbursed for your Saks purchase too.
4. The Point 1% cash back debit card is offering 10x points on Amazon purchases, or just 10% cash back on up to $500 in spend. This seems to be a recurring theme with Point, a few weeks ago the app was offering 15x on Target purchases on up to $500 in spend. With the Target deal I was able to buy gift cards and still got the 15x despite it being excluded in the offer’s terms and conditions. With the Amazon deal, I’m going to do the same thing and I’m 99% sure it’ll pay out. There’s also a BestBuy offer for 5x for what it’s worth.
If you already have the card, this deal is a no-brainer for a few clicks. If you don’t have it, should you get the card? I’m still not sure honestly: It has an annual fee of $49 so it’s not an obvious winner like Cash.app used to be, but if these deals keep coming it’s well worth the entry fee. If you sign up through anyone’s referral link you’ll get 10,000 points or $100 back after spending $1,000 on the card instead of the stupid $5 you get back for signing up directly with Point. So if you go for it, find a friend or another MS buddy and get a referral from them and you’ll both earn $100. Please just go that route, but if you can’t find anyone else with a referral link mine is here (*), as small as I can make it.
Bad news for Safeway, Albertsons, Vons, and other Just4U stores: Gene pointed me at a memo advising that BlackHawk Network cards (like those from Staples or Office Depot) don’t work any more for PIN purchases over $100 at the customer service desk. I’ve also heard that in several regions these cards aren’t working for PIN card transactions any more at Kroger either. Make sure your liquidation avenues can still support unloading these gift cards before you buy more.
To counteract the above, the Just4U stores rewards program has two worthwhile coupons this week. Just make sure you add them to your accounts: Buy two $100 Mastercard Gift Cards and get $15 off, and buy two $50 Mastercard Gift Cards and get $10 off. Both of these deals are below cost deals, so no brainers. They’re also Mastercard Gift Cards, which I famously prefer over the Visa variants.
BestBuy gift card reselling rates went as high as 97.5% this weekend. When you include some of the current grocery store rewards promotions in the mix, you could do better than break even, and that’s not considering credit card rewards. Historically, the these rates get as high as 99%-101% during Q4.
Target gift card rates have sprung back to life, they’re in the 90-92% range right now. If you bought gift cards during Target’s Manufactured Spend Gift Card Weekend and haven’t unloaded them yet, perhaps jump on that.
Mothers day gift card promotions have been pushing resale activity into its first major bull market of the year. There were dozens of great deals this weekend, and I expect that a bunch more will crop up over the coming week. A few examples: Happy cards at Target, Happy cards at Kroger, and Adidas gift cards.
My suggestion for you: get set up on a few gift card reselling markets and start experimenting until you get your feet wet and get the hang of it. We’re starting to enter one of the busy seasons of the year so it’s an easy time to cherry-pick your deals. Also, please remember that everything can go wrong (c.f., The Plastic Merchant), so never spend more than you’re willing to float or eat as a loss, and diversify your holdings and resale markets.
Behold, the majestic swinging gift card resale market!
It’s time to slide into some easy weekend manufactured spend:
1.Lowes is offering a $15 Lowe’s eGift Card free with the purchase of a $200 Visa Gift Card in store. Currently, you can sell Lowe’s gift cards instantly at 80%+ of face, so that leaves a net cost of $194.95 after the activation fee. This is a great way to liquidate the Q2 Chase Freedom 5x earning at Home Improvement stores, which will net you, per card:
The deal runs April 22 through April 28. If you’ve been on the fence with MS or gift card reselling, this is a good one to use to get your feet wet. Note that the promotion terms explicitly state “Limit 2 per email address.” They’re practically asking us to just create more email addresses to scale this one (email is only required upon redemption, not during purchase). Hint: Not all Visa Gift Cards are equal.
Dean let me know about an AmEx offer floating around for 10% back at Lowe’s too, so check for that as a backup to your Freedoms.
2. Staples is back with $200 fee free Mastercard Gift Cards, limit 5 per transaction between Sunday April 25 and Saturday, May 1. Use a Chase Ink Cash, Chase Ink Plus, or American Express Business card with a +4x office supplies offer attached. Update: Thanks to reader Nutella for the correction on Mastercard instead of Visa.
Both of these gift card deals are issued by Metabank, so make sure you have a way to liquidate them. There are definitely ways to cash these out in person, just don’t try at a Walmart Money Center. There are ways from home too, especially if your cost is $194.45.
Remember yesterday’s Alaska Airlines shopping portal bonus that I thought wasn’t worth doing? Well if you have an American Express Business Platinum card, it’s probably worth it now because Dell has a promo offer for 10% off of Xbox Gift cards with code XBOX10. To take advantage of it:
Check for any Dell cash back or 2x/3x spend American Express offers
Start at the Alaska portal for Dell Home, and click on SHOP NOW. UPDATE: RabbMD let me know that Dell Technologies earns 3x instead of 1x.
Add a $100 Xbox Gift Card to your cart
Add a $25 Xbox Gift Card to your cart
Checkout, and enter promo XBOX10
Pay with your Business Platinum
The promo will only apply to one card, but it’ll pick the more expensive one. So, you’ll spend $115, but you’ll get:
$100 back from AmEx as a statement credit (or more if you have an offer attached to your card)
615 Alaska miles
$82-85 in resale value for the Xbox cards (thanks to Katie for the correction in rates)
115 Membership Rewards points (or more if you have an offer attached to your card)
Rid of the Dell credit that expires June 30 and can be hard to use
If you have multiple Business Platinums, create new Dell accounts with new email addresses to use the code again, and don’t ever let the Business Platinum cards co-mingle between accounts. UPDATE: The code works on the same account multiple times, thanks to RabbMD for letting me know.
You’ve got a lot of in-person MS options this week:
Office Depot OfficeMax is offering $15 back on $300 or more in Visa Gift cards in store, limit one per transaction. Make sure you can liquidate these before you buy, there are plenty of ways but Walmart Money Centers mostly aren’t one of those ways. This is 5x with an Ink Cash or an American Express Business Platinum with the +4x office supplies offer.
Meijer is offering $5 off of each $50 in gift cards you buy up to $500 in gift cards with some exclusions after you add the offer to your rewards account. I’d personally buy Happy Treats gift cards and use them at GameStop to buy Steam gift cards for resell at a profit. Make sure you use one of the many cards that bonuses at a grocery store to purchase this one.
Meijer is also offering $10 off of $150 in Mastercard gift cards after you add the offer to your rewards account. Use a card that bonuses at grocery like American Express’s Personal Gold, or the Chase Sapphire Reserve (the Sapphire Reserve gives 3x at groceries up to $1,000 per month for now).
Stop and Shop, Martins, and Giant are offering 3x fuel points on Mastercard gift card purchases. Mastercard gift cards are usually easier to liquidate from home, so they’re my preference over Visa in general. Use a card that bonuses at grocery for this one too.
And finally, a friendly reminder and warning: Double check all gift cards that you pick up in store for any signs whatsoever of tampering. Sometimes scammers will steal, modify, reseal, and replace the cards to drain them after you activate them. I usually pull cards from the back of the rack on the assumption that they’re less likely to be stolen, and I give each card a good, hard look. I also try and buy gift cards that have barcode numbers in sequence when possible (say, the last 4 digits of the activation code are 3666, 3667, and 3668 when I’m buying three Home Depot cards). If the card supports it, I try and match the ID on the packaging with the ID on the card itself.
Pictured: gift card scammer. How do the grocery stores not notice this person walking around?
The Gift Card reselling market usually sucks during the first couple of months of a year, prolly because consumers are detoxing with a hangover from holiday shopping and aren’t sick of their new toys (yet). The hangover is ending now though and the gift card secondary markets are really starting to pick up. A few of my observations for April:
Consignment sale holding time has shortened considerably, with the turn-around time dropping to one to three weeks for big retail brands (exceptions: Home Depot, Target)
Appetite in private markets for volume gift card sales is soaring, kinda like PLBY stock
BestBuy gift card resale rates are creeping back up (I’ve seen 1-2% higher in the last couple of weeks, and break even deals when grocery rewards are included)
Capacity for immediate/non-consignment sales in gift card clubs is growing
Retailers are also starting to offer big discounts for Easter, and usually this trend just continues to pick up steam until mid-Summer.
If you don’t have any gift card reseller relationships, there are a few good exchanges out there. Stick with something reputable, good volume, and a good reputation in the community. There are a couple of gift card sellers that I have gotten to know personally and that I trust with bigger volume. That said, always keep your outstanding float in gift cards no higher than the dollar amount you’d be willing to lose if everything went wrong, and spread out your reselling amongst as many reputable sources as you can so if one fails, your whole portfolio isn’t gone. (c.f., The Plastic Merchant, which went bankrupt in 2019 and left resellers holding the bag)
MS note: In the right circles, you can easily do $30-60k of gift card reselling per week after you’ve developed relationships and moved into inner circles, so don’t ignore this technique. Do start out with something really small and slowly ramp over time though, so if you make newbie mistakes they don’t cost you much. As always — don’t push this beyond the amount you’d be willing to lose if something goes wrong. It can happen and has happened.
The worst part of gift card reselling: having a bunch of plastic cards floating around that you can’t get rid of (“just in case”), but serve no useful purpose.
Time to sail into the weekend. While you’re floating away, check the following:
1. Southwest has opened their travel bookings for most fall and some early winter travel through November 5. Now is a great time to lock in your fall travel if it involves any destinations served by Southwest. I’d recommend you book with Rapid Rewards points if at all possible because you can always redeposit or change Rapid Rewards bookings with no fee, so you can easily get the points back when the price drops or when your plans change. If you need a Rapid Rewards top-off, don’t forget that Southwest is a Chase transfer partner. Also, don’t forget that there’s no undoing that Chase to Southwest transfer.
2. Chase has targeted more co-brand cards for Q2 spend offers. Check your Hyatt, IHG, Marriott, United, AARP, Starbucks, and Disney cards (or any other co-brands you have with Chase) for a Q2 spend bonus here. If you don’t see any offer or get a strange error, reportedly incognito mode in your browser can help get you a bonus.
3. Since our favorite Vanilla Gift Card promotion code FLASH2020 has now died (more like SUNK2020, amirite?), I’m again interested in Simon.com gift card purchases. If you are too, use promo code APR21SAVE50 at Simon to save 50% on fees when purchasing Visa or Mastercard gift cards. Don’t use an AmEx though, you won’t earn points and the Simon transaction won’t count toward minimum spend.
It’s smooth sailing from here, just don’t look starboard-side.
